Looping - Out of Range TypesIn this tutorial we are going to use the Curve Editor to show you how you can make your animations loop infinitely. We will accomplish this by creating a simple animation of a birds wing flap. Later we will use this same idea and combine it with particle flow to create a flock of birds effect.

To begin simply open up a brand new 3DS Max scene. We will start by modeling and linking a few simple shapes to give us the shape of our bird.

On your create tab, create a cylinder and then change its settings in the modify tab.

We will make it fairly large just to make it easier on ourselves for now, later on you can shrink it for whatever purpose you find for this little guy. I have given it a Radius of 8 and a Height of 50. 1 in each of the segment types and only 6 sides to keep it as low poly as possible. This will stand in for our birds body.

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Next, create a box next to the cylinder which will represent the upper portion of our birds wing.

Right click over the box and Convert it to and Editable Poly so we can adjust its shape slightly.

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Then go to your modify tab and in the editable poly command panel, select the Vertex sub-object selection, and move the vertices around to create a shape like this:

That looks more wing shaped, next deselect the sub object mode. Select your upper portion of your wing and hold shift then drag to the right to copy it.

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For the second piece of our wing, go to the modify tab and again turn on Vertex sub-object selection. Then move the top vertices down till they match up with the original wing.

There, that will give us a nice segmented shape for our birds wingspan. It will also allow us to move it in two places to add arcs and joints to the animation.

Before we can animate this successfully however, we will need to move our Pivot points to the inbetween area where our joints would be.

Go to the 3rd tab in on the right side command panel. The Hierarchy Tab.

3rd tab in is called the Hierarchy Tab.

At the top you will find the Affect Pivot Only button. Click to toggle it on.

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Then in your scene using your Select and Move tool, move the pivot point for the currently select object, to wherever you want it to rotate around.

For the lower part of the wing, I want the pivot point to be right in the middle between the lower and upper parts of the wing. So when I rotate this for animation later, it will swivel around the joint area.

Do the same thing for the upper wing, but place it's pivot near the body of the bird.

Good, now that our pivots are moved successfully turn off the "Adjust Pivot Only" toggle button in your Hierarchy tab.

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We will now be able to rotate our wings correctly, but before we animate we need to set up our Child to Parent links. So that the lower wing follows the upper wing, and the upper wing follows the body of the bird.

Toggle your link tool to on,

Then select only the lower portion of the wing, when it is selected click on the lower portion of the wing and drag towards the upper wing. Once you are hovering over the upper wing and see the dotted line making a connection between the two wing parts, let go to link.

You can test to make sure you have done it correctly by move the upper wing, the lower wing should follow it now.

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Next, select the upper wing only. Follow the same steps to link the upper wing to the birds body.

Now both parts of the wing will move if you move the body and we are ready to animate the wing flap.

Toggle on your Select and Rotate tool, and then turn on your Auto Key button underneath the timeline at the bottom.

then...

This gets us ready to create some keyframes.

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Next, move your timeline slider to about frame 5.

Rotate your Birds upper wing so that it looks like it is in the up position for a wing flap.

You will notice that a keyframe has been made at frame 5 and at frame 0.

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Next still on frame 5, move the lower portion of your wing so it looks like a birds wing when it flaps.

I notice most birds wings move in opposition to each other, you can continue to curve this wing up as well if you want for whatever creature you are imagining. This is where your animation observation skills come in.

Next, move the timeline slider all the way to frame 15 giving us 10 frames between the first keyframes, and the next set.

Then rotate your birds wings to the down position for the wing flap.

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This will create a new keyframe for both wing parts at frame 15.

Next, move your slider to frame 20, and turn off your auto key button.

Turning auto key off makes your screen less red, we don't need to keyframe the last one like we did the first because a keyframe for this position already exists and all we have to do is copy it.

Make sure both parts of the wing are selected in your viewport, then drag a selection box around the very first keyframe at frame #0.

Hold shift, and drag it from 0 to frame 20 and then drop.

If you scrub back and forth along your timeline between frame 0 and 20 you will notice that you have one full wing flap starting and ending back in the middle.

Our next task is to make this animation loop indefinitely so that we don't have to key frame or copy frames over and over and over.

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To do this we will go into our mini curve editor. That is the little button located next to the first frame on your timeline.

Clicking this button will change your timeline frame standard view, to curve editor view.

In here we have a lot more control over our animation... everything from the tangents used in giving our animation effects like slow in/ slow out as well as making our animations loop or cycle, etc.

For this step make sure that both of your wing parts (upper and lower) are selected in your viewport. This displays the key frames and their curves for both parts of the wing.

Then you may need to use your mouse wheel in the curve editor window to zoom out a little so you can see all the key frames for these two objects. When you can see them all just like above, drag a selection box around all of them on the timeline.

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They should all highlight white and show little bezier handles when you've grabbed them all.

Then, go up to the menu bar above the curve editor and find the Edit menu. Click it, then Controllers, then Out of Range Types.

A new dialogue menu will appear with options for repeating your animation.

Here you can set your animations to automatically perform a number of things from cycles (like in walk cycle) to loops, and ping pongs. Set the two buttons under loop to toggle on. This reprisents looping forwards and backwards... coming in and going out.

Then click OK.

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Your curve editor will reflect the change you just made by mimicking your actual curves with dotted lines that continue onwards out from where you did your animation.

If you scrub across your timeline you will now notice that the wing continues flapping indefinitely now.

Now we just need to copy our single animated wing over to the other side and make some minor adjustments.

Place your timeline slider at frame #0 and then select both parts of your wing once again.

Select the axis that makes your wing flip to going the other direction

Adjust your Offset to move it over into place on the other side of the birds body.

Make sure to mark Copy so we can change it.

Then click on OK.

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This looks good to begin like we may be finished but, try sliding your timeline slider back and forth to see what really happened.

Mirror did a good job switching it over, but it also mirrored our animation into going the other way.

We can fix this easily by just swapping the keyframes arount.

With just the new upper portion of our left wing selected, close out your curve editor by clicking the large Close button in the top left of the window. This will bring you back to standard timeline.

With the new upper wing box selected, simply drag a selection box around the key frame at frame #5... this time DO NOT hold down shift, just simply drag them over to frame 16 (one after where our other keyframe is at currently)

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Then move the frame currently in the frame 15 position, back to frame 5.

Lastly move the frame we just dropped in frame 16, back one to 15 so they match again.

We only have to do this for the new upper wing object as it is the parent of the copied objects, the child will have mirrored over correctly. Now you should have both wings flapping up and down in similar fashion forever.

One thing left to do for the animation to be complete. We will animate the birds body bobbing up and down as it flaps it's wings.

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Select the Bird body cylinder and turn on your auto key again and move the timeline slider to frame 5. The body has no key frames assigned yet, so we will make some that follow the wings motion.

With Autokey on and your slider at frame #5 (which is when our birds wings are in the up positoin) we will counter this movement by moving the birds body down a little ways.

Then move your slider to frame #15 (when the wings are in the down position) and move the birds body up quite a bit.

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Then just like we did with the wings, turn off Auto Key and hold shift and then copy the keyframe that was made for us on Frame #0 .... to frame #20.

Now repeat the steps with the body, that we did for the wings in the mini curve editor.

With the body selected, open the mini curve editor.

Drag a selection box around all the keyframes in the curve editor with the body selected.

Go up to the Edit menu -> Controllers -> Out of Range Types....Then set both toggles to on below the loop setting and then hit OK.

Close your mini curve editor.

Your bird will now bob up and down with its wing flaps indefinitely.

Next we will add a handy dummy object so that you can animate this bird flying around without disrupting any of the keyframes we have already made. This method also works very nicely if you plan on adding this animated shape to a particle system in the future to create flocks of birds. - http://tutorials.diclementi.com/birds.html

Go to your create tab, and then over to the helpers button (it is the one that resembles a tiny tape measure)

We will create a dummy object to surround our animated bird shape and can then animate the flapping bird moving around anyway we want.

Drag and draw a dummy object so that it just encompasses the animated bird shape.17

Then toggle on your link tool again in the upper left corner of 3DS Max.

Select just the birds body cylinder and click and drag to link the body to the dummy object.

This green dummy object will not show up in any renders, but you can key frame it, or add it to a shape instance in particle flow later and your animated bird will follow it. Almost like a self contained animation that works a lot like movie clips do in Flash animation.

Hope you enjoyed this one, move on and try "Flock of Birds" in the effects section now and use this to make a nice flock of flying birds! - http://tutorials.diclementi.com/birds.html

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